The Contracted World: New & More Selected Poems

In The Contracted World, Peter Meinke brings us new poems and old, including in this collection work from four of his previous volumes. The poems show what it is like to live and grow up in America; they are full of images of “love, nature, cities, sports, war, and peace” as well as grief, confusion, and death. “Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.”

The University of Pittsburgh Press calls the poems in The Contracted World “passionate and compassionate…deeply imagined and accessible to the general reader, focusing on personal and political life in American society.”

Peter Meinke is a professor emeritus at Eckerd College where he served as a professor of literature and creative writing. He is the recipient of numerous poetry awards and holds the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia. He has served as writer-in-residence at University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Hawaii. His previous poetry books include Scars, Zinc Fingers, and Liquid Paper.

Reviews

"Meinke hits his real stride, roving with eager curiosity and honesty from free verse to well-wrought sonnets and back again. . . . Meinke's control over his medium is remarkably secure. He can push traditional verse toward doggerel without endangering his honesty." -- Poetry Magazine